Online Colleges in Illinois

Online Illinois Universities and Colleges

Are you interested in attending college in Illinois? Are you working to create a list of possible college and university choices in this state so that you can narrow down your options? Have you already determined the area of study that you plan to pursue and now you hope to find the perfect school that will help you achieve your educational goals? In addition to great scenery and a wealth of options for you to enjoy, Illinois also has many educational opportunities. If you are looking for a large research based university, Illinois has that to offer you. If you are thinking more along the lines of a smaller, liberal arts college, that option is definitely available! Whether you want to be in a large, metropolitan area or in a more rural setting, there are universities available in both areas that are sure to meet your educational and career goals. Generally speaking, Illinois has twelve top schools that will surely be good options for you to choose from.

Northwestern University is one of the larger options for you to consider in Illinois. This private, research based university is known for its strong academic programs in the areas of sciences and liberal arts. However, it is important to note that this university has one of the most selective admission processes in the state of Illinois. Or, you could choose to attend the University of Chicago, which is also classified as a private research based university. This learning institution is known for being one of the top in the United States; again, this university has a selective admission process and is known for its academic programs in areas of science and liberal arts. If you plan to pursue a technical degree program, then you may want to think about attending the Illinois Institute of Technology, which is located in Chicago. This private, research based university is known for its strong programs in areas of engineering, architecture, and sciences. In addition, there are numerous private liberal arts colleges for you to choose from. For instance, you could choose to attend the Illinois Wesleyan University located in Bloomington, or the Knox College in Galesburg, or the Lake Forest College, which is located in Wake Forest, Illinois. Of course, there are some private institutions that are more research based schools. For example, Loyola University Chicago is a private Catholic research university that offers strong business and science programs. In addition to campus based degree programs, Illinois, like many other states, also offers students online learning programs and hybrid programs. To obtain your degree in a hybrid program, you would be expected to complete components that would be campus based and components that would be completed online

Illinois has much to offer students and residents, alike. Chicago, which is the most populous area in this state, along with largely agricultural areas, small industrial areas, and a wealth of natural resources helps to round out the many things this state has to offer.
Illinois State was made a state in 1818 and is located in the Midwestern region of the United States of America. Regarding land area, it is the 25th largest state in the US, noted as a microcosm of the entire US and is the sixth most populated state. Out of the presidents of the United States, three of them have been elected as presidents while living in Illinois that is Barrack Obama, Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses s. Grant, besides the three, Ronald Regan was the only US president that was born and raised in Illinois state although his political career was majorly based in California. The total population of the state in the 20th century was about 5 million with most people going there because of the increased employment brought about by then expanding the industrial base that was taking place then.
Education is compulsory in Illinois from age 7 to age 17, and their schools are mostly divided into there tires of primary and secondary school which is the elementary school, middle school or junior high and high school. There are eleven universities that are ranked on a national level with six of them ranking in the first tier (top quartile) in the top 500 national universities in the United States. They include the University of Chicago, North-Western University, Northern Illinois University, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Illinois Institute of Technology, and the University of Illinois at Chicago, Loyola University Chicago, Illinois State University and DePaul University.

The University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private university if research, holding top-ten positions in various international and national rankings and measures across the world. It was founded in 1890 and is made up of a college, various interdisciplinary committees ad graduate programs organized into seven professional schools and five academic research divisions. Besides being known for its professional schools, it is also known for its arts and sciences. The current enrolment of the university is about 15,000 students overall, and its scholars have contributed majorly in developing various academic disciplines including the Chicago school of literary criticism, the Chicago school of religion, school of economics, school of sociology law and economics theory in legal analysis and the behavioralist school of political science. In the spring quarter of 2016, it e rolled 5,547 students in the college, 3,498 students in its professional schools, 3,249 students in its five graduate divisions and 14,095 students overall. The world’s first man-made self-sustaining nuclear reaction was developed with the aid of the university’s physics department. The university is home to the largest university press in the United States, which is the University of Chicago Press and the hope of being completed by 2020, the Barack Obama Presidential Centre will be located at the University which will include the offices of the Obama Foundation and the Obama presidential library.
The university contains a library system, holds ties with numerous independent academic institutions and is accredited by The Higher Learning Commission. It runs on a quarter system whereby an academic year is divided into four terms that are summer, autumn, winter and spring. Before their quarterly academic breaks, full-time undergraduate students take three to four courses per quarter for about eleven weeks. The college of the University of Chicago, which is its undergraduate college, offers degrees in Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Sciences in over 50 academic majors, and 33 academic minors. The college academics are in five divisions the Humanities Collegiate Division, the Biological Sciences, the Social Sciences, the New Collegiate Division and the Physical Sciences Collegiate Division.Southern Illinois University Carbondale
Colloquially the university is known as Southern or SIU; it is a public research university serving as the flagship campus of the Southern Illinois University system, located in Carbondale Illinois United States. Southern Illinois University Carbondale was created in 1869 by an approval of the Act of the Twenty-Sixth General Assembly of Illinois initially as Southern Illinois Normal College. In the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, the University is categorized as a high research activity university and is recognized as a university that grants a variety degrees and strongly emphasizes research (National University) in the US News and World Report. It enrolls students from more than 100 countries and all the 50 states of America, offering 80 master’s, 192 undergraduate and 32 doctoral programs plus professional degrees in medicine and law. Additionally, the National Science Foundation ranks it among the public universities in America for development expenditures and total research and number 107 among the earned doctorates.
Being a major public university, SIU offers over 300 academic degree programs at all the three levels of bachelor's, doctoral and masters and offers professional programs in architecture, business, law, and medicine. It has been offering an MD/JD dual degree program since 1989 that leads to the concurrent award of both degrees after completing six years of coursework. Basin on its breadth of research and its academic programs, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching recognizes the university as an elite institution of higher education. In the 2011 editions of annual college rankings by the US News, it was at position 70 of the overall National Universities and was awarded $78 million in research grants in the academic year 2013-2014. In the departmental rankings, the Department of Philosophy is ranked among the best eight departments in the US in American Philosophy. The Automotive Industry Planning Council ranked the Automotive Technology Program at position one in three years, 1991, 1999 and 2005 and the College of Business and Administration ranks among the top in the United States with its finance department ranking among the best five. The school of journalism is ranked among the top five in the country; criminology department among the top five, zoology department among the best ten, the aviation programs is continually ranked as the top most program in the county and the school, of law’s legal research and writing program as the second in the country.
The university’s College of Agricultural Sciences has four academic departments, which are Soils and Agricultural Systems, Agribusiness Economics, Food and Nutrition, Forestry and Plant with eight majors and 26 specializations. In 2007, a Ph.D. program in agricultural sciences was added to the college; it is a research degree aimed at preparing graduate students in funding and developing their individual research program and teaching both undergraduate and graduate students. The College of Applied Sciences and Art, on the other hand, continues to undergo changes that address the workforce needs in the region of southern Illinois, the state, and the whole nation. It has four schools that offer three master’s degree programs, two associate degree programs, and fourteen baccalaureate programs. It gives students off-campus opportunities to get baccalaureate degrees in Aviation Management, Medical Dosimetry, Health Care Management, Electronic Systems Technologies and Fire Service Management. It also offers an online baccalaureate degree in Information Systems Technologies with 49 hours of the upper level and selected elective co-courses available to students located in various places throughout the United States. Loyola University Chicago
It is a private American Catholic research university situated in Chicago Illinois and commonly referred to as Loyola or LUC. It is today among the largest Catholic universities in America and a big contributor to the economy and cultural capital of Chicago. Founded in 1870 by Jesuit priest and educator Fr. Arnold Damen, Loyola’s professional schools have given education services to many generations of civic leaders, local business leaders, and the Loyola University Medical center is the body that anchors its distinguished health sciences, medicine, and nursing programs. Loyola University has eleven colleges and schools combines and offers more than 80 undergraduate and 140 professional or graduate programs enrolling about 16, 000 students in total. Located in the metropolitan areas of Chicago are its six campuses with another campus in Rome and guest programs in Ho Chi Minh and Beijing. Its flagship lakeshore campus is located along the Lake Michigan shore in the Rogers Park and Edgewater neighborhoods in northern Chicago. The college of arts and sciences is found there, and a variety of graduate programs is offered here too.
Loyola University Chicago is made up of the following colleges and schools: schools of Law, Social Work, the Graduate School, Communication, Business, Stritch School of Medicine, School of Continuing and Professional Studies and the Marcella Niehoff School of Nursing. The colleges are the College of Arts and Sciences, Saint Joseph College Seminary and Arrupe College. Loyola University is now one of the top 100 national universities as per the 2016 US News and World Report college rankings and is placed among the fifty Best Value colleges by the US News. It is ranked sixth in the colleges that are most committed to community service by the 20122 USA Today. The BusinessWeek has ranked its graduate school of business as the top in ethics in the whole country. Being a home to Saint Joseph College Seminary, religious education has always been one of the university’s hallmarks. The seminary serves the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago and gives vocational training to diocesan priesthood candidates, and for those looking for careers in lay ministry, the university gives rigorous religious education with the Loyola University Institute of Pastoral Studies and degree opportunities in Interdisciplinary Catholic Studies.Northwestern University
It is a University based in Evanston, Illinois privately owned and governed by an appointed board of trustees made up of 70 members. Its academic facilities are located in San Francisco, Washington, DC, California, and campuses located at various places including Chicago, Illinois and Doha and Qatar. The Northwestern University is made up of twelve schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 professional and graduate degrees in its colleges and schools. John Evans who is named after the city Evanston is the one who founded the university together with Methodist leaders, lawyers, and businesspersons. It is considered as one of the most prestigious universities in the United States of America and most especially in its Social Sciences where it is ranked 11th globally. The sole purpose of establishing the school was for it to serve the north-west territory that now consists of Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana and sections of Minnesota states. The university being a large research institution with a comprehensive doctoral program attracts more than $650 million in research that is sponsored every year. Its university endowment is the tenth largest in the United States and is currently valued at $9.6 billion and from a pool of 37,255; the university accepted 9% of the undergraduate applicants in 2017. In the Big Ten Conference, of which the University is the founding member, it continues to remain the only private university in it.
The Northwestern Evanston campus is where the undergraduate schools the Kellogg school of Management and the Graduate school are situated while its Chicago campus is where the school of Medicine and Affiliated Hospitals, a part-time MBA program, the school of Law and school of Professional Studies is located. It offers evening classes and weekend courses for those working and studying. NU-Q that is the satellite campus in Qatar was opened just recently, and it offers bachelor’s degrees in journalism and communication. It is a university accredited by the north central association of colleges and schools, and between 2012 and 2013, it conferred 3,272 master’s degrees, 2,190 bachelor’s degrees, 444 professional degrees and 565 doctoral degrees. Northwestern offers accelerated, honors and joint degree programs in science, medicine, engineering, mathematics and journalism with its comprehensive doctoral graduate program having a high coexistence with undergraduate programs. Undergraduates at the Northwestern University take four courses per quarter and twelve courses in one academic year, they are needed to complete at least twelve quarters on campus to qualify for graduation. The five undergraduate degrees that are most commonly awarded are in journalism, economics, political science, psychology and communication studies while the programs with the largest enrollment number of students are chemistry, economics, electrical and computer engineering, integrated biology and material science.

Best Careers in Illinois

Human Resource Specialists
Human resource specialists in Illinois screen, hire, interview, screen and assign workers to an organization or company. Human resource specialists carry out any task related to employee relations, training and compensation, and benefits. They are usually trained in every discipline of human resource and carry out task and duties in all the areas of the department plus placing and hiring workers. They aid in guiding employees through all the human resources procedure and answer policy questions. They make sure that all human resource functions comply with the federal, local and state regulations as well as administering benefits, process payroll and handling any questions or problems associated with it. There are three types of human resource specialists: recruitment specialists, who screen, look for and interview any job applicants in an organization, placement specialists that match qualified applicants with employers and set up an interview and lastly human resource generalists, these take care of human resource work. They have tasks and duties in all human resource areas. Employment services are the largest employers of human resource specialists in Illinois and the United States generally, followed by the government, professional, scientific and technical services, healthcare and social assistance and manufacturing respectively. They usually work in offices while some like recruitment specialists extensively travel to meet applicants or attend job affairs.

Educational Requirements
Usually, human resource specialists in Illinois are required to have a bachelor’s degree in human resources, business or any field related to that. The coursework should typically include business, psychology, accounting, human resource management, professional writing and industrial relations. Human resources generalists positions may need one to have previous work experience, and one can gain that by working as an assistant in human resources or customer service positions. Among the important qualities a human resource specialist should have are decision-making skills useful when reviewing applicants’ qualifications and resolving disputes, interpersonal skills to interact with new people, connect with them, listening skills useful during interviews, speaking skills for effectiveness at work, and be detail oriented when evaluating the qualifications of applicants.
Pay and Job Outlook
As of May 2016, the median annual wage for human resource specialists was $59,180 with the lowest 10% earning less than $34,770 and the highest 10% earning over $101,420 in Illinois. The employment of human resource specialists is predicted to increase 5% as fast as the average for all occupations from 2014 to 2024. In employment services, the employment I predicted to be faster than the average because organizations will continue contracting out human resources functions to companies that offer human resources services to client businesses. Approximately 16% of human resource specialists work in employment services industry. Organizations will have the need to replace workers that leave the workforce with new human resource specialists, and they, therefore, will need more of them to handle the increasingly complex employment laws and healthcare handling options. Conversely, companies might start using available technologies and thus will temper with the employment of human resource specialists. Software that allows workers to manage quickly, update, process human resource information are more efficient when carrying out administrative tasks than being done manually. The job prospects are however expected to be favorable, and job opportunities are expected to be good in the employment service industry, but overall those having bachelor’s degree and professional certification will have the best job prospects. Market Research Analyst
A market research analyst gathers and analyses data on competitors and consumers. They study market trends, conditions to examine potential sales of a service or product in helping companies understand which product people want most, what type of people will buy it and at what price. Their duties include monitoring and forecasting marketing and selling trends, analysing data with the aid of statistical software, preparing reports and presenting results to the management and clients, evaluating and devising methods of collection of data, measuring the effectiveness of marketing programs ad strategies and finally converting complex data and findings into comprehensible tables and written reports. They help to determine the position of the company in the market by doing research and collecting information that will help determine the potential markets, pricing, and product demand. The largest market research analysts’ employers are management, scientific and technical consulting services followed by wholesale trade, finance and insurance, company and enterprise management, and manufacturing industries.
Requirements for Licensure
A market research analyst has to have a bachelor’s degree in market research or any related field such as maths, computer science, communications, social sciences, administration, and statistics. Some jobs require a master’s degree often required for leadership positions or technical research ones. On the other hand, analysts may look for certification to demonstrate how they are competent although it is not necessary. One has to possess skills in communication, analytical, be detail oriented d and be a critical thinker.
Salary and Job Outlook
Market research analysts in Illinois had a median annual wage of $62, 560 as per May 2016 with the highest 10% earning over $121,720 and the lowest 10% earning $ 33, 950. Their employment is projected to grow up to 19% from 2014 to 2024 faster than the average of all jobs, driven by an increasing utilization of data and market research across every industry. Mainly to measure the effectiveness of marketing and business strategies and to know the wants and needs of the customers. Companies are given the chance of building an advantage over their competitors and have a competitive edge because of the function of market research specialists who help the companies keep track of the customers’ satisfaction and collect feedback on how to improve their services and products. Companies can better market directly to their target population after using research on consumer behavior to develop marketing strategies that are improved. The job prospects are expected to be for those with a master’s degree in statistics, marketing, business administration or research. Those who have stable and strong quantitative background in statistical and data analysis will be better at finding jobs than those with none.